


Negative

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [16]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, ASiB, ASiP, Gen, Reunion, TGG, The Adventure of the Empty House, a little help from the living...and the dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When Sherlock comes back from the dead, he comes back dead. Or that’s what John thinks at first.</p>
<p>...and then the violets come in at the house across the street."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative

**Author's Note:**

> Probably part of something longer, but a 221B for now, because (apparently) resistance to economy is futile.

_“No hurt, no pardon  
out here in the cold with you  
you with your back to the wall.”—Adrienne Rich, “Orion”  
  
  _

When Sherlock comes back from the dead, he comes back dead. Or that’s what John thinks at first, but the fates couldn’t be so cruel, could they? They could no doubt, but they’re not.

There’s a splintered door and a limp hand and a week of tea and disbelief, and then the violets come in at the house across the street.

While Sherlock sleeps, feverish, Mrs. Hudson’s husband teeters on the sofa’s arm; Jennifer Wilson looks in with her hands full of nicked pinks.

Lestrade runs his hands over a stack of cold cases.

The archival photos piled on Sherlock’s bed show the city in negative. The past is a weight, the murders and thefts and Sherlock and John.  The dead peer in the windows.  Both Irenes shade their eyes.  A ghost plane, with its shadow, lifts off.

Molly at the morgue, repentant, angelic.

***

“All the people you saved, Sherlock, though you didn’t want to.  The ones that died because they needed killing.”

“Is that why you’ll forgive me, John?”

“No,” John says, ”I’ll forgive you because.”

A boy peers in the window; the tripwire unspools from around his body, oh--

the past is a weight, the daughters and husbands and Sherlock and John.  

In a week they’re bound as they’ve ever been—in a week they’re more so, splintered and bound.

**Author's Note:**

> Pinks—flowers of the genus Dianthus; mostly pink in color and having “pinked”, or ruffled, edges.


End file.
